


Paradise

by hollycomb



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, POV Outsider, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 15:18:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after the apocalypse, Dean gets saved again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> This is another one that was written before Castiel's vessel had a backstory on the show.

I guess it was about two o'clock in the afternoon when the roughed-up looking guy from downstairs showed up at my door telling me his dead brother was haunting my apartment. I note the time here because it seemed an odd occasion to be stinking drunk, and I couldn't imagine someone coming to their neighbor with such information unless they'd been at it all morning. He actually seemed a bit more sober than usual, or at least differently fucked up, and I had a sympathetic suspicion that he'd moved on to harder drugs.  
  
"I know this sounds crazy," he said. He was leaning in my doorway, and I guess I should have been more frightened, but he was such a good looking guy, despite the scars, or maybe because of them. He seemed harmless, and had been trying to get my attention since he moved in a few months before. I knew he wasn't interested in dating me -- ass too fat and nose too big for a guy like that, even if he was insane -- and I'd been trying to figure out why. Him wanting access to my apartment for purposes of communicating with his dead brother was not my number one suspicion.   
  
"You're some kind of con artist," I said. "Right?" There were disappointed people everywhere who would love to let a ghost spice up their lives for awhile. I was tempted to believe him myself.  
  
"Yes," he said. "Well. Retired. Mostly. I'm not trying to con you."  
  
We stared at each other. He had this look of dumb innocence about him, especially when he'd been drinking. I rarely saw him during the day and had no idea how he earned money. He was in his late thirties, maybe. It was hard to tell.  
  
"My name's Dean," he said, as if that was somehow relevant.   
  
"Okay." I turned around to check on my daughter. She was ignoring the TV and watching us. "What do you want?" I asked Dean, squinting out at him. It was a cloudless summer day, and the sunlight that poured into the cement courtyard of Paradise Valley Apartments was blinding behind Dean's slouched silhouette.   
  
"I need some time alone in your apartment," he said.   
  
I shut the door in his face as politely as I could.  
  
*  
  
I'd moved to California recently myself. My boyfriend left me pregnant in Utah when I was twenty-two. He was one of those Mormon kids who got kicked out of the cult before he could steal any of the elders' teenage brides. He finished high school in a group home and had a lot of problems. I tried to tough it out at home after he left me, but eventually the appeal of living anonymously in a shithole apartment complex out in California was just too great.   
  
I didn't really know any of my neighbors, though I recognized them. There was sweatpants guy who smelled awful, wrinkly lady whose cats stalked the local birds, and lonely teenage girl who, like me, was probably doomed. When Dean moved in, we all took notice. He looked like a career ass kicker who had run out of luck. At first, I only ever saw him walking back and forth from the liquor store down the road, carrying big paper bags and wearing dark sunglasses. In June he started showing up at the pool. He would crack a few Buds and sit for a long time like he was trying to figure out where he was. Lonely teenage girl and I admired him from afar, but no one made an attempt to get to know him.  
  
"How old's your kid?" he asked me one evening in the laundry room. I nearly jumped out of my shoes. The laundry room was not a place where people conversed. Neighbors usually averted their eyes like we were in a porn shop.   
  
"She's two," I said. Emma was sitting on the floor playing with a plastic horse she'd been obsessed with for weeks. She galloped him so hard across the floor in our apartment to two of his legs had snapped off, but the loss didn't seem to bother her.   
  
"That's great," Dean said. I scoffed.  
  
"You've never had a two-year-old, have you?" I felt bad after saying it. Emma was already my best friend, and the one solid thing I'd accomplished. I only meant to complain about the tantrums.   
  
"Nope," Dean said. His jaw went tight. "No kids."   
  
He left, and I was relieved. It didn't occur to me until later that he'd come and gone without any laundry.   
  
The next time he spoke to me was at the soda machine by the pool. Emma was watching with silent terror as I pounded on the thing in frustration. It had been another pointless day at my work from home telemarketing job: no sales. I didn't blame the people who hung up on me; I sympathized with them, wanted to crawl through the phone and become them. I was making virtually nothing and had no health insurance, but I couldn't bring myself to leave Emma with strangers while I went to a real job. Meanwhile, not making any money caused me to do things like beat soda machines to death in front of her when they ate my quarters and didn't give me grape soda in return.  
  
"You need some help with that?"   
  
Dean had been standing behind me as I called the machine a motherfucker. I turned around slowly, humiliated. He brushed me aside and put his hands around the machine like he was going to hug it, then tipped it sharply to the left before setting it back in place. It coughed irritably and spit out a grape soda, two Cokes and a Mountain Dew.   
  
"Thanks," I said. It was a somewhat delayed reaction. I couldn't remember the last time someone had even held a door for me. Again, Emma was staring at Dean like she was waiting for him to break into song. He took the Mountain Dew and tapped the top of the can with his fingernail.  
  
"Don't mention it," he said. "You mind if I have this one?" I shook my head and he cracked the can open, drank some. I stood there with my grape soda until I realized that I was staring at him the same way Emma was. I opened my drink and tried to think of something I could talk to another adult about. It had been awhile, aside from the people who called me an asshole before hanging up on my attempts to sell them office supplies.  
  
"It's just been a long day," I offered in way of explanation for myself.   
  
"I hear ya," he said. I'd been sitting by my front window for most of the afternoon and hadn't seen him leave his apartment, but what did I know. Maybe he was running a company in there.  
  
"C'mon," I said to Emma, holding out my hand, a signal that we were about to make a break for it. She pointed at the Cokes that were still sitting in the machine and I shook my head.   
  
"Hey, can I ask you something?" Dean said.   
  
"Sure." Emma hadn't budged. She hadn't really been around any men since we lived at my parents' house in Utah, and she was clearly trying to figure out what Dean's deal was.   
  
"I've been having these problems with my apartment," Dean said. "Strange sounds, and the lights flickering. Anything like that happening at your place?"  
  
"What do you mean, 'strange sounds'?" I mostly heard the neighbors' TVs and arguments and occasionally their headboards knocking into the wall.   
  
"Like, spooky," Dean said. "Like, unexplainable."  
  
"Not really."  
  
"And the lights?"   
  
"I don't know. They flicker when I'm running around, chasing after Emma."  
  
"Your television ever do anything weird?"  
  
"Like _what_?"  
  
"Oh, I don't know." He looked like he'd lost his train of thought. He was peering out of the alcove that held the soda machine and looking toward my apartment. "I was just wondering if you were seeing weird things, too."  
  
"Emma," I said sharply, and she recognized my tone. She walked to me and I picked her up, balanced her on my hip.   
  
"Maybe it's just me," Dean muttered. He sounded so sad that for a minute I considered inventing some strange sounds to tell him about. He had that kind of face. But there was something driven about his questions that I didn't like. I thanked him for the soda and walked back to my place, bolted the door behind me. He always made a point to say hello to Emma and I after that, which was itself quite strange for a Paradise Valley resident, and I could tell he was itching to ask me if my microwave was acting funny or some goddamn thing. When he finally showed up at my door with the story about his dead brother, I was equal parts let down and intrigued.   
  
A normal person with a fulfilling life would have gone out of her way to avoid him after that, but I was in no position to turn away from an adventure. Conscious of the fact that it might all be an elaborate trick that would end in something as simple as my television set being stolen, I decided to at least hear him out when he approached Emma and I at the pool a few days later. It was early afternoon, everything bleached out by the sun. I was skipping out on work to play with my kid because I was tired of my damp apartment. Dean must have seen us through the slatted blinds of his first-floor place, and he walked out in a t-shirt and swim shorts, carrying a carton of orange juice. Emma and I were in the shallow end, she in her floaties and me in my horrible black one-piece that was falsely advertised as slimming. Dean came to the edge of the pool and stood casting a shadow over us, winced.  
  
"Well," he said. "You want to hear why?"  
  
"Why what?" I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew.   
  
"Why I think my brother might be in there."   
  
"Okay." I looked at Emma. "Providing you censor it."   
  
"Sure, sure." He sat down and drank from his orange juice. "Am I allow to say the d-word?"  
  
"Damn?"   
  
"Died."  
  
"I guess." I hadn't yet been forced to explained death to Emma, so she was still oblivious enough to be bored by the subject.  
  
"Okay. Well. He died there."  
  
For some reason I got the impression it was the first time he'd said so out loud. It looked like it hurt, bad. I hugged Emma to me with some instinctive gratitude.   
  
"I'm so sorry," I said. Paradise Valley looked like a place where many a drug-related murder had taken place. I waited to hear what had happened, but Dean seemed suddenly exhausted. He drank his orange juice and stared into space. Emma looked at me with concern, like I should do something.  
  
"Anyway," he finally said. "I've checked a bunch of other places. I guess I was kind of saving this one for last. Avoiding it, I guess. Even if you haven't had any disturbances, I'm thinking that if I go in there, maybe. You know."  
  
"I'm sorry," I said again. "But. Why do you think your brother is a ghost?"  
  
"Ghost?" Emma chirped happily. I gave her a look that silenced her.   
  
"You don't believe in ghosts?" Dean asked.   
  
"I used to," I said. "When I was a kid. Maybe I still do. I don't know. I've never seen one."  
  
"I've seen them."  
  
He said this so seriously I got goosebumps. I looked over my shoulder like an army of ghosts might have accumulated on the other side of the pool. There was nobody there except one of wrinkly lady's cats.  
  
"Oh yeah?" I wasn't sure what he wanted me to say. He seemed newly cautious, like what he said next was going to convince me he was crazy, forget what had come before.  
  
"You know there was a battle between heaven and hell here on earth five years ago?" he asked. I frowned, disappointed. He was just beginning to interest me, and I didn't want to find out that he was only a religious nut job after all.  
  
"Who won?" I asked.  
  
He laughed so hard that Emma got nervous, but I just grinned back at him. I understood, sort of. I'd survived an invisible apocalypse myself.   
  
"You think I'm crazy, right?" he said.  
  
"Yeah," I said. "But it's okay. You're the only person in California who will talk to me. I'm a telemarketer, so. I guess I'd have been rooting for evil in that particular battle."  
  
Dean went serious again, and I felt bad for the comment. He really believed everything he was telling me. I felt sorry for him.   
  
"Where did you come from?" I asked.   
  
"Kansas," he said.  
  
"Well." Somehow that seemed appropriate. "We're from Utah."  
  
"So can I take a look around your apartment?" he asked, like we'd been having a completely different conversation.   
  
"I'd be crazy to say yes."   
  
"Please," he said, quick like he'd anticipated my response. "I know this is weird but I promise you -- I -- I'm desperate. Okay? I'm sorry. I just have to -- things ended -- too fast."  
  
For a second I thought he was going to break down, but maybe it was just the light. I wanted to get out of the pool, but I didn't want to expose my thighs to the view of someone so attractive. Not out of any fool's hope that we would fall in love over a Ouija board, but out of sympathy for him. He'd already been through enough.  
  
"Did you lose your brother recently?" I asked.   
  
"Yeah," he said. "I mean. No." He stood, and when I looked up at him the sun shone directly behind his head, glowing out around his ears like a halo. "Five years ago."   
  
"Oh," I said, as if I understood any of this. He started to walk away, and I sat Emma on the side of the pool, slid my arms around her.  
  
"Hey," I called, and he turned back. "You can come by tonight. Just to look around."   
  
"I'll bring the beer," he said, smirking. He was too cute to be fully crazy. I wanted to help him, but got the feeling that, by humoring him, I was only making things worse.  
  
"He's nice," Emma said when he was gone.  
  
"You think so?" I climbed out and picked her up, brought her over to a weather-worn lounge chair to reapply sunscreen.   
  
"Is his brother in our house?" Emma asked. It broke my heart when she called the dank one-bedroom rental we lived in a house.   
  
"I don't think so," I said. "Maybe."   
  
"He is," Emma said with a grin, but like me, like Dean, she only wanted him to be.  
  
*  
  
I took a shower and put on something decent like I had a date. This was the first remotely social thing I'd done since moving to California, and the humor of it did not escape me. I fried some plantains and made yellow rice, wished I had something to drink. When Dean pounded on the door and held up a case of PBR, I was so stupidly grateful that for a second I forgot this wasn't a date at all. A crazy drunk from downstairs wanted to check out my apartment to see if his dead brother was hiding in one of the closets. Or at least that was the plan. When I stepped back and asked Dean to come inside, he stood there with the beer tucked under his arm and his smile tightening on his face, didn't move.   
  
“You know what?” He handed me the beer. “I can't actually do this. I don't think.”   
  
“Okay.” I was still glad for the beer. Emma was in bed, and it had been a long, strange week. I started to shut the door, but he threw his hand out against it.   
  
“Wait,” he said. “Yes, I can.”  
  
I started to say _that's the spirit_ , then was very glad I'd stopped myself. Dean walked into the middle of the central living area, which looked in on the small open kitchen. He looked less hopeful now, more afraid.  
  
“Here,” I said. I opened the case of beer and pulled one out, handed it to him. He grinned and tapped it against his temple like a salute. I shrugged and opened one for myself. He chugged the beer like we were at a frat party, took a long breath and opened another one.   
  
“I wasn't going to get drunk,” he said after he'd finished half the can.  
  
“Famous last words.”   
  
“Yeah. Right. The thing is, I. We were really close. My brother and me.”  
  
“I'm so sorry.”   
  
“I mean really close.”   
  
I wasn't sure what he wanted me to do. I'd expected him to bring some ghost summoning supplies, crystals or shrunken heads or something, but the thing he pulled from his pocket looked like something from a science lab, with an antenna and a row of tiny bulbs. He walked around the apartment with it and I followed him, drinking beer. We went into my bedroom, where Emma was not actually sleeping, and she grinned at us from my bed while Dean waved his device around the room.   
  
“This doesn't mean he's not here,” Dean said when we were back out in the living room. I was eating yellow rice from the pot and he was working on his fourth PBR.   
  
“What doesn't?” I'd tried to stay out of it, didn't want to continue to encourage him.   
  
“The EMF detector,” he said. “It's supposed to – whatever. Sam's ghost would be tricky, is what I'm thinking.”  
  
“His name was Sam?” I asked. Dean nodded. “Do you want to try speaking to him? I could go into the bedroom with Emma if you want some privacy.” I figured he probably just needed closure, not proof.  
  
“If this was a normal job I would have just broken in,” Dean said.   
  
“What? Into my apartment?”  
  
“Yeah. But. I think I didn't – don't – want to be here alone. Also, you never go anywhere.”   
  
“Why don't you sit down?” I asked. He looked at me like he couldn't figure out what I meant, so I pointed to the couch. “You want anything to eat?” I asked again, and again he shook his head.   
  
“I thought I would just walk in and I'd know what to do,” he said. His voice wasn't gone but it was going.   
  
“Dean,” I said. “You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but what happened here? To your brother?”  
  
His eyes got wet and then dried up again. He was staring at a spot on the wall to the right of the television. I followed his gaze, but there was nothing there.  
  
“It didn't happen here,” he said. “I mean, he. It ended here. He got – and I brought him here. It was –“ His voice cracked hard but came back easily. “Raining ashes, and I was carrying him down the road, and I brought him in here because I thought it was a motel, and I thought it should happen in one of our motels, not out there with the sky falling. And a couple days later I walked out there and everything was back to normal. Like none of it had ever happened.”   
  
I wondered if I should call someone. I didn't want the poor guy to end up institutionalized, but he needed help, and I could only sit beside him on the couch and apologetically touch his shoulder. He put his head down and drew both hands over his face, sucked in his breath.   
  
“I keep waiting for him to come back,” he said, almost too steady now.   
  
“I know,” I said without thinking, but I did know. Sometimes the world ends, and everyone else goes on like nothing changed. It was that way for me: pregnant, alone, unemployed, all completely my fault, but it felt like I was only watching it happen. I tried to tell myself that Dean had only been speaking metaphorically all along: maybe he got his brother involved with a drug scene that caught up to them, and he felt so guilty he could only talk about it in apocalyptic terms. He stood up and looked around the place.   
  
“I've gotta go,” he said.   
  
“Are you okay?” I asked, standing as he reached the door.   
  
“No,” he said. He turned back with his hand on the knob. “But I'm not going to kill myself or anything. Don't worry. I promised someone. Thanks.”  
  
Then he was gone, and I was so sure that he would actually kill himself that I couldn't sleep. But I saw him the next morning when I was on the way to the Quick Stop with Emma to pick up milk and cereal. He was standing near the pool with his hands in his pockets, staring up at my apartment.   
  
“I still think he's in there,” he said when I walked over to him. “I've been dreaming about this place for five years.”   
  
“He's in there,” Emma said, and I boggled at her, mortified. Dean was staring, too. Emma giggled.  
  
“She just repeats what people say,” I told him, but he looked newly hopeful, and I realized with familiar dread that what had at first been an entertaining whim was going to cost me dearly. He'd be knocking on my door every night, coming in with beer and stories about the holy war that everybody else forgot.   
  
Sure enough, he showed up that night, this time just asking if I still had that beer. He finished off the case himself and fell asleep on my couch. Again, I was up all night worrying, this time that he would kill me and Emma. When I got up the next morning he hadn't moved, and I made a racket putting Emma's breakfast together in an effort to wake him. I kicked the side of the couch when that didn't work, and he sat up with alarm, drew a gun from the back of his jeans and pointed it at me. I shrieked and backed into the wall.   
  
“Bang!” Emma squealed with delight, peeking out of the kitchen.   
  
“Get back!” I shouted at her. Dean was breathing hard and tucking the gun back in his pants, holding up his other hand in surrender.  
  
“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot where I was for a second.”  
  
“Get out!” I screamed, and he did.   
  
I didn't see him for a few days, and it was a relief at first, then troubling. I was not usually a very trusting person, but I thought there was something genuine about him, and I at least wanted to know more.   
  
“Where's that man?” Emma asked one night as I was tucking her in.  
  
“What man?”  
  
She shaped her thumb and forefinger into a gun, and I rolled my eyes.   
  
“He's not well,” I said.  
  
“Yes, he is.”  
  
“Goodnight, Emma.”  
  
I tried to watch some TV, but I couldn't concentrate on anything, and finally I gave in and looked out my front window. Dean was at the pool, his pants rolled up to his knees and his feet in the water. With the pool lights casting watery reflections all over the courtyard, he looked like a pilgrim at an oracle. I groaned and opened my door.  
  
“Hey,” I shouted, and he turned. “Are you armed?”  
  
“I'm always armed,” he said.   
  
“Okay. Well. You can come up here if you promise you're not also drunk.”   
  
“Uh,” he said, but I let him come up anyway. What they say about the unfair advantage of a pretty face is most definitely true. If he'd been hulking and pockmarked I would have moved across town without looking back. As it was, I held the door and let him in again.   
  
“What the hell do you do for money?” I asked him.  
  
“I steal,” he said, falling to sit on the couch. “I figure the world owes me.”  
  
“Why, because you saved it from being overtaken by hell?” I had a few theories about this elaborate myth surrounding his brother's death. Maybe they had a dangerously religious father. Maybe Dean thought he was the second coming of Christ. It's a popular delusion, I've read, up there with the reincarnation of Napoleon.  
  
“Whatever I did,” Dean muttered. “It wasn't enough.”   
  
“Dean, how did your brother die?” I asked, too harshly, but I got the feeling he wanted me to keep asking questions, so the apartment wouldn't fall silent, so he wouldn't be reminded that there were no ghosts banging around the place after all.   
  
Dean just shook his head, almost like he didn't know the answer.   
  
“He's got to be here,” he said tightly. "At first I thought it would be enough just to come back to this place, and then I thought this specific apartment, and now – fuck, I don't know what else to do. But these dreams – I've been trying to ignore them and I can't. And he was – he had these prophetic dreams, see? So it's got to be him. I knew he'd come back.” He looks happy for a second, in a demented way, then broken again.   
  
“I don't know what to tell you,” I said. "There's no one here but me and Emma.”  
  
Dean narrowed his eyes at the television set.   
  
“He was always better at figuring this shit out,” he said. “Like, when we'd get stumped.”   
  
“You can't sleep here,” I said. He nodded, left.   
  
Things went on like this for awhile. My financial situation got worse, and Dean started bringing me groceries. He paid my rent one month, and I began to get used to having him around. He told fantastic stories about hunting vampires and exorcising demons, and as wrong as it was to allow someone to continue living this way, he seemed lucid and capable despite the intricate fantasies, and, also, I really needed the money.  
  
Eventually I could see the weak little light in his eyes begin to flicker out. He started showing up only a couple times a week, and then more to see if Emma and I needed anything to actually search for his brother. I didn't understand why he cared; he obviously wasn't interested in me in a romantic sense. He seemed to need to take care of somebody, anybody.   
  
“I don't know what I'm doing here,” he said one night. “Like, what am I doing on this planet, alive, whatever. I feel like I used to know.”  
  
“Join the fucking club,” I said, and he looked at me like he'd just noticed I was there. That happened a lot.   
  
Then the other guy showed up. Emma and I were coming back from the pitiful playground in the neighboring apartment complex, which she for some reason preferred to the one at ours. There was a man standing in the courtyard near the pool, holding a sheet of paper and looking lost. I wasn't going to intervene, but he called out to me when I walked past.  
  
“Excuse me,” he said. He was sort of pathetic looking but handsome, maybe forty years old. “Is there a Dean Winchester who lives here?”  
  
“I don't know,” I said, clutching Emma closer, though the guy looked terrified and harmless. “There's Dean Johnson in 19-A.”  
  
I realized after I said it that telling a stranger where Dean lived was phenomenally stupid. The guy carried a gun and had no less than ten serious-looking scars, and that was just what was visible when he was fully dressed.   
  
“Johnson,” the man said. “Like. John's son?”  
  
“Like, that's his name.”  
  
“Oh. I understand, I mean –“  
  
“He's crazy as hell,” I said. Maybe this was someone who had come to help, a concerned relative. The man looked confused for a moment, then smiled.  
  
“That's him,” he said.  
  
“How do you know him?” I asked.  
  
“We were, uh.” I watched him struggle to come up with something, and took it as a good sign that he wasn't much of a liar. “War buddies.”  
  
“What, in Iraq?”  
  
“Yeah. No. It's a long story. Do you know if he's home?”  
  
“He never leaves,” I said. I figured that even if this guy had come to kill Dean, Dean could take him. He was shorter than Dean, and not built as sturdily. He had a few scars of his own, crossing his left eyebrow and just above his right cheekbone.   
  
I rushed upstairs and changed Emma into her bathing suit. I left my t-shirt and jeans on and hurried back down to the pool, grabbing a bag of pizza flavored Goldfish when she complained on the way back out that she was hungry. When I got there, the mystery guy was still knocking on Dean's door, and I grinned at Emma, glad I hadn't missed anything. I was strapping her floaties on when Dean finally opened the door.  
  
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he snapped, like he'd already checked the man out and loaded his gun.   
  
“Dean,” the man's voice broke with relief. “I've been looking for you for five years, I – I – “  
  
“Looking for me? Bullshit. You've always known how to find me.”  
  
“No,” the man said. “He did, but. I – didn't.”  
  
“You – what?”  
  
“It's me, Dean,” the man said. His voice dropped lower and I held a finger to my lips to get Emma to stop splashing. “Jacob Denny. It's just me this time. I've – been looking for you.”  
  
“Yeah, you said that.” Dean was quiet for a long moment. “Why?”  
  
“Dean,” Jacob said. “It was me. I mean, I know it was him, too, but I was there. All the time.”   
  
“Yeah, and?” Dean spat.   
  
“I missed you.” Jacob Denny's voice was such a perfect disaster, such an exact reflection of Dean's own lonely misery, that I loved him immediately. Because, it was clear, across the courtyard and in only three words, that he loved Dean. _Thank God_ , I thought. _Thank God somebody does_.   
  
“You're not him,” Dean said, and he slammed the door.   
  
I fished Emma out of the pool and turned around. Jacob was standing in front of Dean's door, staring at the ground. He had one hand flattened over the number 19 on the door, as if he had to steady himself on something Dean had at least touched. I had always known Dean must have once been the kind of man who had guiltlessly smashed a thousand hearts without noticing. I wanted badly to help this man who had missed him, because I had a feeling he was the only thing that could ever help Dean.  
  
“Hey,” I said as Jacob started to walk away. He came to sit beside me on an adjacent lounge chair, dejected and slack-jawed. “You care about him?” I asked. He looked up slowly, his mouth still hanging open in sad disbelief.  
  
“It's okay,” I said. “I'm his friend. Sort of. He thinks his dead brother lives in my apartment. Well, _lives_ isn't the right word, I guess. Haunts.”  
  
Jacob blinked at me, and I couldn't tell if I was annoying him or making things worse or what the hell was going on. He was better looking than I'd originally realized, blue-eyed and full-lipped. I could imagine he and Dean together, maybe before Dean's brother died and he went nuts. The thought was stupidly thrilling.   
  
“He doesn't remember me,” Jacob said. “He thinks he does, but he doesn't.”   
  
  
“Did you hear what I just said?” I asked. “He thinks his dead brother is here. That's why he moved in. He needs help. I thought that was why you came.”   
  
“I came because _I_ need help,” Jacob said.   
  
“Well, okay, but –“   
  
“What else has he told you?” he asked.   
  
“All kinds of crazy shit. Look, who are you, really?”  
  
Jacob studied me for awhile before answering. Emma was sitting perfectly still in my lap, as if he'd hypnotized her.   
  
“I was possessed by an angel,” Jacob said, his voice shaking. “An angel who was told by God to look after Dean. I think this caused me – something caused me – to fall in love with him. We – things happened. He didn't know it was me. He thought he was in love with an angel. Or he was, I guess. And maybe the angel loved him, too. But not the way I did. I'm pretty sure it – doesn't work that way.”  
  
When he finished, I sat listening to the sound of the water sloshing against the sides of the pool. Emma was staring at Jacob as if she'd understood every word.   
  
“I don't know how I could possibly respond to that,” I said. My hope that this man would deliver Dean from his delusions was completely incinerated. Still, irrationally, something in me thought they should be together. Who else but me would humor them?   
  
“I know.” Jacob dug his fingers into his dark hair, sighed. “It's the first time I've said it out loud. And I don't even know who you are.”  
  
“I'm nobody,” I said. “I just want Dean to stop looking for his dead brother in my kitchen. It's breaking my heart, okay?”  
  
“Sam's gone,” Jacob said, shaking his head.   
  
“What really happened?” I asked.  
  
“It's going to sound even crazier than I what I just told you.”  
  
“Okay.” I held up my hands. “Just don't give up on Dean. He needs somebody, for God's sake, even – whatever. I'll talk to him.”  
  
He smiled, and there was something so earnest about him, less complex than the good I saw in Dean. I said before I could stop myself:  
  
“Do you need a place to stay?”  
  
*  
  
I took Emma with me when I left Jacob up in my apartment, because as much as their crazy had by then rubbed off on me, I still wasn't going to leave my daughter alone with one of these people. Since all of this had begun she'd been much more well behaved than usual, as if she was, like me, hanging on every word of this psycho melodrama. When I knocked on Dean's door, she stared at it just as expectantly as I did.   
  
Dean answered on the fifth insistent knock, and he looked like he'd been asleep for five days, though I'd just seen him dismiss Jacob twenty minutes ago. The realization that his eyes were red and puffy because he'd been crying hit me so hard I almost went speechless, but eventually I found my voice.  
  
“That guy,” I said. “He's got an even wilder story than yours.”  
  
“He's just some religious freak,” Dean said. “I've never even met him.”  
  
“Oh yeah? You seemed to recognize him.”  
  
“Well. There's a reason for that.”  
  
“Yeah, he told me.”  
  
“He _told_ you?”   
  
“Some crap about being possessed by an angel. Dean, who cares? You believe in demons, don't you? Why not angels? Anyway, he says he loved you. Loves you.”  
  
Dean shut his eyes and shook his head rapidly, like I'd just slapped him and he needed to regain his bearings.   
  
“You don't know what you're talking about,” he said.  
  
“Like you ever do? Why won't you at least hear him out?”  
  
“Because I don't even _know_ him, okay? And the person he – was – just fucking ditched me after my brother died, which is I guess what he wanted all along, and I don't know how the _fuck_ that guy found me, but the whole thing had _nothing_ to do with him.”  
  
And then he slammed the door in my face like he was returning the favor.  
  
*  
  
Jacob was a very polite houseguest, didn't drink and never pointed a gun in my face. He slept on the couch and spent the afternoons watching soap operas, charitably pretending that my sarcastic commentary was funny. He was exactly what Dean needed, soft and cautious, and also crazy, but more quietly so. I made an actual sale on Wednesday, and decided to go out to Red Lobster to celebrate. Jacob joined me, and as we headed toward my car in the apartment's lot, we ran into Dean, who was on the way to his Impala.   
  
“What the fuck is he still doing here?” he asked.  
  
“None of your business,” I said, pushing Jacob toward the passenger seat as he looked longingly back at Dean.  
  
“You're nuts!” Dean shouted.  
  
“That means a lot, coming from you,” I said. He scoffed and stormed away, but not before looking back three times. Jacob was quiet on the way to the restaurant.   
  
“Why'd you fall in love with him, anyway?” I asked, fuming. I had a strangling grip on the steering wheel. I wanted this thing resolved, wanted someone's motherfucking life to end happily, even if the only chance I had of witnessing such was two people who believed in witches and werewolves and God knew what else.   
  
“I don't know,” Jacob said. “He was. I mean. You've seen him.”  
  
I raised my eyebrows, nodded. He had a point.  
  
“So this guy who – possessed you.” I hadn't figured out this particular metaphor yet, but I felt I was on the verge of understanding it. “Dean loved him back, you think?”  
  
“He fell asleep in his arms every night for four years,” Jacob muttered, as if he was embarrassed about this, or bitter. “In my arms. Even when the world was close to ending. Until he found his brother again.”  
  
“Okay.” I let out my breath, tried to read between the lines. “So he loved him. You.”  
  
“Him.” Jacob shook his head. “I shouldn't have come.”   
  
“No, no, you should have, you definitely should have. Dean is – lost. But he must have had some falling out with – whoever. As soon as he laid eyes on you he was defensive.”  
  
“Yes,” Jacob said. “Castiel – the angel – he left Dean after he was satisfied that Sam – his brother – would not survive the wounds he'd sustained in battle. Sam sacrificed himself, he knew what he was doing, Castiel understood this, but Dean couldn't accept it. Five years later he still – hasn't. He – his family – they have a problem letting each other go.”  
  
“Dean has family other than Sam?”  
  
“Well, he did. They all died, fighting this same war, essentially.”   
  
“Jesus,” I said. We were parking in a Red Lobster lot as we had this conversation, tourist families waddling around behind us. I turned the car off and looked into the backseat, at Emma in her carseat.  
  
“You following this?” I asked. She laughed, slapped her knees.   
  
“Where's her father?” Jacob asked. It was a pretty forward question, but as he'd been telling me about his vicarious gay affair with my neighbor ten seconds earlier, I didn't mind.   
  
“Who knows,” I said. “He had issues with family, too. He was Mormon, you know, the creepy kind. Grew up on a compound and – whatever. He left us.”  
  
Jacob stared out the windshield for awhile, as if he was processing this. My stomach growled, and he looked over at me.  
  
“I was Mormon,” he said.  
  
“What changed your mind?” I asked.  
  
“God,” he said. “God is – beyond human comprehension.”  
  
“You've met him, eh?”  
  
“No. But I guess I – glimpsed him, through Castiel. He was not troubled by humans drinking alcohol or having sex prior to obtaining a marriage license, or many of the things my religion forbade. It was not – told to me, but when you get anywhere near that sort of – celestial burden, all the bullshit just falls away.”   
  
I smiled. He was such an unexpected, sweet and ridiculous addition to this drama. I wanted to stick a bow on his head and deliver him to Dean, who needed him like water, whether he knew it or not.   
  
*  
  
Jacob had been staying at my apartment for a week before Dean finally showed up at the door. I was making peanut butter and jelly muffins, and I knew it was him just by the force of the knocking. Jacob seemed to have the same realization; he sat up straighter on the couch, where he'd been paging through one of my magazines like a bored patient in a doctor's waiting room. He looked toward the door like his name had been called.  
  
“Can I help you?” I asked when I pulled it open. Dean gave me a look that matched my smartass tone.   
  
“He's still here, isn't he?” he asked.  
  
“He hasn't got anywhere else to go,” I said, though I wasn't sure this was true. Jacob didn't talk much about his life outside of Dean and their imaginary apocalypse.   
  
“That's nice,” Dean said. “Can I come in?”   
  
“Of course,” I said, stepping out of his way. Jacob was still on the couch, and he stood up when Dean walked in, tried and failed to mask his excitement. Dean threw out his arms and let them slap against his thighs.  
  
“Well?” he said. “What do you want? A medal? Congratulations for surviving. Me and you – pretty much the only ones left standing, right? Maybe you're happy about that, but I'm not, exactly.”   
  
“I just,” Jacob stuttered. I pretended to be busy in the kitchen, though I was sure they both knew I was listening.   
  
“I just wanted you to know me,” he said. “Or remember me. Because I was there, the whole time. Sometimes, when you looked at me – I thought you knew. I thought you were seeing me, someone human, someone who. Wanted things that he just – put up with.”   
  
“That doesn't make any _sense_ ,” Dean says, hissing the last word hard. “Why would he put up with anything? Why would you have any say at all?”  
  
“Because he wasn't evil! It wasn't about controlling someone, using them. It was about showing me something. Honoring my faith and addressing my – confusion. “  
  
Dean glanced at me, and I looked down at my muffin batter, but it was too late. He'd seen me watching.  
  
“I just want to let you know,” he shouted. “I can't vouch for this guy. I don't know if it's such a good idea to let him sleep here with you and your kid. I don't know anything about him.”  
  
“You do know me!” Jacob said, suddenly a breath or two away from sobbing. “I was the one who –” he said, quieting to a whisper. “And you – inside me – it wasn't him –“  
  
“Okay, okay!” Dean said, so sharply that I heard Emma whine from the bedroom, where she was having her nap. I flushed and coughed and pounded at the muffin batter with my wooden spoon, tried to think of an excuse to leave the room.   
  
“You know me,” Jacob said. “But I'm not the one who left you.“  
  
“I can't – “ Dean blurted, and I didn't know if he was saying he couldn't remember or just couldn't deal with this. I watched Jacob watching him go, and when he slammed the door behind him, Jacob sank to the couch.  
  
“Hey!” I shouted, something burning hard between my ribs.  
  
“What?” he asked, his voice just a little croaking thing.   
  
“Go after him!”  
  
He nodded and bolted for the door. When he left it thrown open, I didn't bother to shut it. This was much better than the soap operas had been of late. It was like one of the classic amneisia, evil twin, star-crossed lover plots. I stood by the door still clutching my mixing bowl, and listened to Jacob shout Dean's name through the courtyard.  
  
“ _What_?” Dean finally shouted back at him. I peeked through the window and saw them standing by the pool, its greenish water lit up and rocking like someone had thrown a stone into the deep end.   
  
“He left me, too,” Jacob said. “And you were gone, and I didn't know how to find you. It's taken me five years. I prayed to him, to God, and got nothing. They were through with us. But it was a gift, I knew, if I could just find you –“  
  
“Stop,” Dean said. “Stop talking, _fuck_.”   
  
“I was the one who held you,” Jacob said, almost too quiet to hear, but the cement courtyard echoed like an amphitheater. “He cared for you, he loved you in his way. He never had a bad thought for you, even when you cursed him, even when he cursed you back. But he didn't know what you needed. That was me, Dean. I'm the one, the night Sam left –”   
  
“Shut up!” Dean said, falling to sit on one of the lounge chairs. He pulled his short hair into his fingers like he was going to rip it out. “Just shut up – you – you're just a – he left me –“  
  
“I can prove it,” Jacob said.   
  
“Prove _what_?” Dean asked with a snarl.  
  
I actually gasped when Jacob yanked him up and kissed him. They didn't notice, locked together like a good memory. Jacob held Dean's face, and Dean had his hands around his wrists like he was going throw him off, any minute now, but instead he just pulled back and exhaled a whimpered half-word, breathed hard onto his mouth.   
  
“It doesn't matter,” he huffed, still holding Jacob's wrists. “Everything's totally fucked.”   
  
“But I found you,” Jacob said, as if this explained, forgave, eclipsed everything.   
  
Dean tore away from him then, and went to his apartment without looking back. He bolted the door; I could hear it from where I was standing. I ducked away from the window before Jacob could see me watching, put the mixing bowl back in the kitchen and waited for him to show up at the door. When he didn't, I peered back down into the courtyard. He was sitting with his back to Dean's door, his legs pulled up to his chest.   
  
“You need anything?' I called.   
  
“No, thank you,” he said weakly.  
  
“Okay. Goodnight.”  
  
He raised a hand to wave, still staring ahead at the pool, which had gone still. I shut my door and locked it. Still didn't know what to think, but I was so tired I left the muffin batter in the bowl for the ants to find, went into the bedroom and curled up beside Emma, who was of course awake.  
  
“It's bedtime,” I told her when she turned to smile at me.  
  
“Mommy,” she said, scooting in close.   
  
“What?”   
  
“I love you,” she said, clumsily touching my hair. I kissed her forehead and wrapped her up tight. It was sort of amazing, what a difference that made, from one person, from anybody who really meant it.  
  
*  
  
I got up early the next morning to clean up the mess in the kitchen, and waited as long as I could to check the courtyard and see if Jacob was still slumped outside Dean's door. He wasn't. I didn't know if this was a relief or just depressing – he might have left for good.   
  
I sat at the window and did my morning calls while Emma watched television. The only thing I saw was sweatpants guy itching his ass as he walked to the soda machine and a stray dog who drank out of the pool. The curtains over Dean's window were perfectly still. I made Emma mac and cheese for lunch and ate it with her, glancing at the window every few minutes, but there was no sign of what happened to Jacob. I thought of knocking on Dean's door, but figured I'd been nosy enough. The day passed slow and uneventful, and I wasn't even satisfied when I made three sales.   
  
That night, I stayed up late after Emma was in bed, watching bad movies on basic cable. Every time I heard a noise from down in the courtyard I popped off the couch and peeked through the blinds, but it was only ever my boring neighbors, shuffling home after the late shift or taking out their trash. Finally, at three o'clock in the morning, I fell asleep on the couch.   
  
I dreamed about Dean's apartment, which I had never seen. The walls were covered with newspaper clippings and ancient drawings of odd phenomena, the kitchen table littered with fast food wrappers. The lights were all out, but in this dream, I could see in the dark. Dean was in bed, naked and sweat-sheened, sitting up on one elbow. Jacob was lying on his back beside him, gazing up at him like he was a painting on the ceiling of a chapel. Dean had one hand spread across Jacob's chest, counting heartbeats.   
  
“You taste different,” he said, his voice thick with exhaustion, green eyes warm and bright through the dark.  
  
“Yeah, well,” Jacob said. “It was a long five years.”   
  
Dean smirked, then kissed him soft like he'd break, until Jacob grabbed the back of his neck and rolled him over, licked his lips apart.  
  
I saw them walking to Dean's car a few days later. Dean was laughing and Jacob was lingering close like he was afraid he'd disappear again.   
  
Dean showed up at my door with a duffel bag that afternoon. He grinned, and I noticed for the first time that he had freckles, crazy perfect irony, just under his eyes.  
  
“You're leaving,” I said.  
  
“Yeah.” He turned around, and I glanced into the courtyard, saw Jacob waiting with another bag slung over his shoulder. He waved.   
  
“I think I figured out why I came here,” Dean said. He looked over my shoulder one last time, to make sure his brother wasn't standing inside, still waiting.   
  
“Well,” I said. “Paradise will miss you.”   
  
“I bet.”   
  
“Where are you guys headed?”  
  
“Montana. There's a werewolf on the loose up there, I think. He's got a lot to learn about hunting, but there ain't no way to practice until you're knee deep in that shit, you know what I mean?” He winked.   
  
I shook my head. “Be careful.”   
  
“Right back 'atcha.” He started to walk away, half-turned back. “Thanks for. Whatever,” he muttered.  
  
“Don't mention it.”   
  
I walked out onto the landing and watched them load up Dean's car. It looked like he'd finally washed it, and the sun bounced off the shining hood like a spotlight. Jacob climbed into the passenger seat and rolled his window down like he'd done it a million times before. Dean put his sunglasses on, backed out of his parking space, drove away.   
  
I stood out there for a long time, Emma inside singing nonsense songs, the TV on mute, and for a couple of minutes before I went back in, I think I actually believed everything they'd told me.


End file.
